


Changes

by transnerdylad



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 20 years after golden trio, Angst, Angst and Feels, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, J.K. Rowling shaming, Original Character(s), Trans Male Character, Trans Writer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23287606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transnerdylad/pseuds/transnerdylad
Summary: My little OC Harry Potter story, set twenty years after the Golden Trio, because I'm stuck in quarantine in the South. First fanfic ever, please have mercy. Also, my title and all my chapter titles are David Bowie songs, because I'm ohhhhh so original (waves fan).Will take comments and criticism alike.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. Absolute Beginners

You always remember the first time, when you finally understand that you’re unacceptable. I was seven during that original assessment, it was summertime, and I had just sluggishly dragged myself from the overbearing sun. I’d been lazing in it for the last several hours now, burning my skin and ruining my eyes, so as I sank quietly into the cool tile floor it took me a few minutes to hear the voices. But there they were, in the background of the dining room. Usually I’d have ignored them, gone upstairs to read some more, but their was something in their voices that sounded extremely adult-like and important, and besides, I’d just read Harriet the Spy and had been perfecting my eavesdropping skills ever since.  
One of the voices was my mother’s and after a minute I realized the other was one of my neighbor’s mothers, Eric’s one I think. I was so jealous of Eric, he got to go to Hogwarts this fall, I still had four long years to wait.  
Getting out my small journal, I started writing down what Eric’s mum was saying with my finger after whispering a soft “atramento” that caused ink to release from my fingernail. I was so excited to find that spell earlier in the week, after-all, spies don’t have time for all that silly quill nonsense.  
“I just don’t understand it, Lilah. We did the best we could by him, I mean, we didn’t raise him badly at any rate, didn’t expose him to all that Muggle nonsense. And it’s not like he’s been doing badly otherwise, he got seven OWLS and this will probably be his third year as a chaser. Sure, they don’t win a lot, but they’re Ravenclaws, not Griffindors-”  
Not to interrupt you Valerie, but you’re getting off track.”  
“Oh, sorry Lil. I just, I don’t understand why he would do this to us.”  
“Has he actually, tried anything, you know?”  
“No, thank Merlin for that, but we found some body transmogrification books in his room when I searched it earlier, and who knows what he’s planning to do when he gets back to Hogwarts.”  
“You’re planning on sending him back then?”  
“I mean, what else can we do? Arnold doesn’t want anyone to suspect.”  
“Well no offense to Arnold but they’ll jolly well suspect if your son comes back home from break with C-cup tits and pink painted nails.”  
Eric’s mum bursts out crying.  
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s alright. You know, I know of a few places, you know, lovely ones that can get all those silly thoughts out of your boy’s head. What, there’s six more weeks of break? That’s enough time to send him off there, fix him up, and next thing you know he’ll be mastering his NEWTS and bringing a sweet pureblood girl home for Christmas.”  
Tearfully, she asked,“You really think so?”  
“Course, I’ve seen it myself. Now, let me just make us another lovely pot of tea, and I can show you some pamphlets.”  
My head was so reeling and confused by what I just heard I didn’t understand the importance of the footsteps coming towards me until the door I was resting against was pushed open, causing me to sprawl on the floor.  
“For Potter’s sake, Delphi, what are you doing there? Look, you’ve got mud all over my clean floor, I spent fifteen minutes scouring this.”  
“Sorry, mum, but-”  
“You should be. Now go up to your room and get changed. I’m talking to a friend right now.”  
I ran off before she could wonder about the book in my hand or why I was leaning against the door in the first place.  
At first I wanted to figure out what they were talking about myself, like a proper detective, but after spending a few hours wracking my young stupid brain about the whole thing, I still didn’t have a single clue. So, I decided on the next best thing, fessing up.  
After mum had tucked me into bed that night and was asking if I “really” wanted to read the Tale of Babbity Rabbity again, I took my chance.  
“You know actually, no.”  
“Oh, thank Merlin.”  
“So, mum, I know I shouldn’t have, but I was curious, and I didn’t mean to listen in I swear.”  
“Oh, Delphine, I know you were listening into me and Valerie.”  
“You did?”  
“Of course dear, you aren’t exactly subtle. You have a while yet until you’ll be proper Auror material.”  
“So.......what was it about? I was confused.”  
“Well, dear, it’s complicated, but you know some people get very confused sometimes?”  
“........sure, I guess.”  
“Well, her son, the older one, James, not Eric, he’s very confused right now. And she’s just very worried about him.”  
I knew James, he was cool. With dyed green hair and one big dragon earring, he would watch over as Eric and me played Quidditch sometimes. He would act properly impressed whenever we got a ball through the conjured hoops, whooping and doing barrel rolls, and even when I won.  
“Well, what is he confused about? That doesn’t sound too bad.”  
“Dear, he-he thinks he’s a girl.”  
I spent a few minutes mulling that over in my head.  
“Is..is that bad then?”  
Mum looked shocked. “Yes, yes dear, it’s extremely bad, very much indeed. Thankfully his mother cares about him and is going to send him somewhere where he can get all sorted out and normal again.”  
“But, mum, we’re magic. If, if he thinks he’s a girl, why doesn’t he just turn himself into one for a bit, and then he’ll realize he isn’t.”  
“Delphine, you can’t talk like that. Magic like that, magic where you change your body, it’s evil, it’s not right.”  
“But polyjuice potion.”  
“It’s not just right, okay?” mum’s voice suddenly got very low and intimidating, like when she would read the villian parts in books. “Polyjuice potion is different, it’s non-permanent. But to change your apperance permanently through magic, that’s too much. Even for witches and wizards. And we couldn’t even if we were silly enough to want to, it’s illegal.”  
“Oh........”  
“I’m sorry dear, it’s just complicated. You’ll understand it more when you’re older.”  
I nodded my head as she kissed me goodnight and turned off the lights as she left the room, closing the door behind her. In the darkness on pierced by the fairy nightlight who glowed and adjusted her hair every few seconds, I realized tears were running down my cheeks.  
I’d never told my mother this, but the first year when I got to Hogwarts, I was planning to be the best ever transfiguration student they’d ever had. And I’d give myself short hair, and rough hands, and I would get to play with boys properly and I’d be the bestest Quidditch player ever, and when I came back for the summer mum would realize how silly she’d been, because I’m obviously a boy and not a girl. And we’d laugh about it, and she’d bake me a cake.  
But what can I say, I was a stupid kid. A kid who didn’t know any better. Everything that came after though, that is another story.


	2. After All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We're going to Hogwarts, darlin's.

I wish I could say coming to Hogwarts was a significant time for me, hero’s journey and all that junk after-all, but truthfully the only part of it that I remember is that cursed hat.   
Throughout the last few years I’d gone from being significantly aware of everything around me to ignoring all of it, if I could. Sure, I had moments of stark awareness, there was fear, apprehension, and even abject horror sprinkled around my infantile nights. But let’s be honest here, who hasn’t bitten their pillow to keep from screaming while considering ways to stop the forbidding march of time, or more specifically, what it would bring? Right guys?  
People are always surprised that my little twink self is a horror junkie, but considering my entire childhood was the first thirty minutes of a B-movie, I don’t know why. Like, yea, Dan, I like Hereditary; I spent seven years being terrified by an unknowing force that would change my body horribly, permanently, without any possible way to stop it, and that I should be happy about the whole thing. No shit.  
The only possible refuge was ignoring everything that I felt bodily, and instead, consuming everything on a mental level. Mom had long ago lost the time and energy for home-schooling, so every one of my “school” days before Hogwarts was hiding in the back corner of the library, reading tome after tome.  
But with that, we come to the hat. The one that I was already prepared for “Yes, Ravenclaw please, if you don’t mind. Thank you so much.” and go on my way.   
Stupid bloody hat.  
I tried of course, but my stream of thought was lost. No, not lost, it was everywhere. It was the sudden torrent storm after a drought, the screaming after a gag was removed, I was suddenly so filled with emotion, and anger, and fear, and everything else I thought I might burst from containing it. Several years of shoving emotions behind a wall causes trauma, who knew. But then, throughout the hurricane of my stupid young angst, was a single bolt of lightning, an irregularity, something different that wasn’t mine, and I moved everything else backwards to focus on them. To cling to them  
“I’ve got to say, my child, you’ll make quite the occlumens one day. But....I’m sorry for the reason for it.”  
“You aren’t supposed to be doing this.”  
It laughs.   
“I have been doing this Gryffindor himself, boy. I know what I’m doing.”  
“No. You’ve seen my head. I want Ravenclaw. That’s all. Goodbye.”  
I tried to push them out but as much as I mustered, I still felt it. It became more frustrating as they started to chuckle.  
“It’s not funny. You aren’t wanted. Isn’t there some Hufflepuff who needs to hear how loyalty is actually a blessing, or whatever? Anyway, I know I have a choice in the matter.”  
I felt the smirk disappear with that sentence.  
“You’re right, you do have a choice. But choices aren't always what you think they are.”  
“SLYTHERIN” erupted from the sorting hat as it was pulled off a small mousy girl’. She’d looked at it angrily, like it had insulted her, but before she could argue a black-haired boy had pushed past her to sit down. Begrudgingly she slunk to the Slytherin table to a few confused clapped and some scattered boos.  
Later that evening, as happens every year, a few students line up in front of their head of house, repeating emphatically that their has been a mistake. They are told the same thing every year, “The hat never makes mistakes.”


	3. The Jean Genie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My re-vamped chapter three. I'm excited where this is going.

As much as I know my mommy issues and the constant studying spurred by my low self-esteem may be fascinating to myself, for the sake of not boring the rest of you to death I’ll skip to my fifth year.  
It was a bizarrely bright Saturday for Wales, and I’d marked down a piece of land in front of the lake, trying to study for Ancient Runes (study Runes, they said. It’ll be useful for medicine, they said. Load of bollocks) but my eyes kept drifting from the page to the quidditch game roaring on the other side of the castle. So busy was I fantasizing that I didn’t notice until Jax was right in front of me.  
“Jesus, Del, you under a Body-Binding curse or something?”  
“Sorry, sorry, just got distracted.” I looked quickly away from the pitch. “What’s up?”  
I didn’t look away quickly enough though, and they’d caught the direction of my gaze. Cheeky perceptive bugger.  
I first noticed them in a combined Ravenclaw/Slytherin herbology class during the start of third year. Professor Longbottom, who had never seemed to understand that ice-breakers were irrelevant after year one, was having us go around saying our name and favorite plant, or whatever rubbish. No one was paying much mind until it was their turn, they took the blue orb that had been passed around.  
“Hiya friendos. I’m Jax, they/them pronouns, and I very much enjoy shrivelfigs. Well, not like eating them, or else I’d be even shorter than I am now, but you know.”  
And passed it off to Hugh Gerald, who was too busy looking queerly at them to catch the sphere, instead having it fall to the ground, shattering, before thinking better about whole thing and repairing itself, bopping up lightly into his palm.   
I could tell the girl standing across from me, Susan Hicks, the prat that she was, was on the precipice of a rant, but she was interrupted by Longbottom looking towards Jax, smiling   
“Brilliant, then, I’ll mark it down in my book. And lovely choice, I can show you some really fascinating ones I’ve been cross-breeding with Moondew if you’d like.”  
And then Hugh, grabbing the still slightly-elevated ball, mumbled something about wormwood, and tossed it over.  
I didn’t come up to them that day, or even the next, (I mean, it’s not like their gender-identity and their confidence revealing it drew me to them, that would be silly) but in the next few weeks it just so came to pass that we were studying in the greenhouse at the same time, or randomly became partners in Potions class, and in retrospect they totally knew what I was doing, but I think we were both lonely. So, through the lending of notes and essays and late-night study sessions, and crying/laughing over exams being canceled AGAIN because Gryffindors never cease to be idiots, we slowly realized that we now knew everything about each other.  
“We should go to one if you want, sometime. Only for academic purposes, obv. See the cis hets in their natural environment and all that.”  
“Sorry, what?”  
“Quidditch games”, they gestured with their head. “So you’ll have an excuse to go to one.”  
“Oh yes, because that’s what they give academic papers to these days. No, not for something as simple as a potion to reduce the effects of the cruciatus curse. No, let’s have a good old anthropological study on a group that thinks they’re the only type of people on the planet.”  
They smirked at that. “That’s why you need to come to college with me, doll. So we can read feminist texts and see pretentious talks in peace.”  
I tried to smile back at that. It was an argument we had a dozen times already, and I didn’t want another one. And I couldn’t blame them for wanting to head out of the Wizarding world. Hogwarts had been more than a bit shit for them since they came out, after all.  
The dead-naming, the wrong gendering, especially by teachers, and don’t even get me started about the whole debacle around dormitories. They slept in the common room for about half a year before the head of house realized that the staircase to the girls’ rooms wouldn’t allow them up anymore.  
So yeah, it was incredibly difficult for them, but we were also in different situations. They were a muggle-born, their moms were engineers who after learning about the magical world, saw it simply as another leg up for Jax’s future. Sure, other kids had extracurriculars and volunteering experience, but could they find ways to breath underwater or understand the physics of Charms? They had summer internships and volunteers every summer, and after graduating from “a private school in Wales, very exclusive and unique, you know” at 17 they’d get into a college, and find out what they actually want to do with their life. I, on the other-hand, knew nothing but I what Jax’d told me about the Muggle world and it would absolutely destroy my mum if I ever went to a university. The wizarding community, course, doesn’t have such things. For things like becoming a medi-witch or Auror you had to take the right classes, and do absolutely brilliant on your NEWTS, and maybe afterwards, you might get an internship. And if not....their were always jobs open at Borgin and Burkes.  
It was a shitty system, but had never been one the Ministry had been particularly concerned with. Unemployment and poverty lines were things for those Muggle-folks to worry about, after all, even if we had twice the wage gap of the rest of England.  
“So, what all did you want to show me, then?”  
I asked as they pull me onto the seventh floor. “I mean, I appreciate the exposure to art”, I gestured towards the tutu-wearing trolls, “But I pass them on Tuesdays and Thursdays on the way to Charms already.”  
They were grinning massively and absolutely ignoring me. “Okay, so you know how I have this habit of pacing when I can’t figure something out?”  
I looked up as they said that, “Is this about the library incident?”  
“Oh…no, I mean, not really anyway. I…okay so I was just trying to study from Transfiguration, but there were some Gryffindor chicks just screaming about the new chaser and his cheekbones, and like, I’d already moved up some floors to get away from people, and at this point I was just sick of it. And, umm…..okay this’ll just be easier if I show you.  
They motioned for me to join them, and took my hand gently. “Okay, so now we’re going to pace in front of this”, they pointed to the bum of one of the trolls, “tapestry, and think ‘I wish I could study somewhere bloody quiet’”.  
“Jax, what is this?” I was half-annoyed and half-freaked out. Was this about what happened in the restricted section?  
“Come on, Del, trust me.”  
So we did, closing our eyes and looking like complete fools we paced beside the portrait, muttering the words to ourselves. And on the third turn they stopped me and whispered, “Look”.  
A giant marble door had appeared in the wall.   
"Well, that's....different, I suppose."


	4. Under Pressure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is mostly science and angst, my favorite.

A door had appeared in the wall.  
Looking over at Jax, they were almost hyperventilating with excitement.  
“And check this out!” they pulled me into the door, and I was too surprised by the whole thing to pull away. Inside was..it was gorgeous. It was a giant library, with cedar-wood stacks reaching to the incredibly high ceiling (about twice of the height of the classroom twenty feet away). And   
On its right-hand side was the most gorgeous little study area you’ve ever seen, with thick couches and sitting chairs next to a gently burning fireplace, and an entire espresso bar in the corner.  
Jax was smiling so hard it hurt.   
“It’s absolutely perfect, isn’t it?”  
I couldn’t disagree with them of that. Although the circumstances of the whole thing were a bit suspicious.  
“Oh, come on!” they yelled as I pulled them out of the room and towards the library. “It’s in the bloody school, it’s not like they’d have access to anything dangerous in here.”  
At that very moment a group of 2nd years were making their way across the stairs when one red-headed boy walked in a second too late, his friend having to seize him by the front of his shirt to keep him from falling down three stories. I stared a them pointedly.  
“You were saying-“  
“Oh, come off it. Even if it is, like Hufflepuff’s lair of cheese danishes and snorlacks, do you think I care by this point?   
“Just come off your teenage angst for half a second while I grab it.”  
“Grab what?”  
I ducked into my Charms class, and returned out a few seconds later, bearing excitement and a small red book.  
“My notebook. Okay, I’m ready, let’s start testing it now.”  
They grinned at that.  
Of course, we realized that doing it too much would be suspicious, someone might catch us repeatedly walking down the corridor, or even worse, seeing the door itself. So, we arranged the experiments for odd hours, early in the morning, late at night, during every quidditch game, or in the middle of feasts.   
We had the standard questions, “was it only a secret study room? Or would it change depending on what you wanted? Could multiple people use it at the same time? And was it changing every time, or were these set places you were transported to?”.  
I thought it was a bit thick for Jax to assume it was a magically changing room depending on your need, I mean, a secret library is something but a secret deus ex machina? So when they first walked up and down that hallway at five in the morning, muttering about needing a place to get a million galleons, I looked pointedly at them when nothing appeared. But they ignored me and kept on it, “needing somewhere to cry, needing a swimming pool, needing a place to hide their eclectic furry porn”, etc, ect. After an hour I got up from my sitting position.   
“Okay, that’s enough Jax. Its obviously just a secret study room, which is still really cool. Now come on, I’m in desperate need for some tea and toast.”  
The looked at me, sighing, “Oh, alright then.”  
But as we were about to leave, they got a look on their face every Ravenclaw gets when they use half a brain cell.  
“Come off it. Okay, we’ll leave, but you,” they pointed at me, “Need to try first.”  
I rolled my eyes. “Sure, why not. What do you want me to say?”  
“Exactly what you said you needed, some tea and toast.”  
Sauntering over to the tapestry again quickly, I closed my eyes, barely whispering. “Please mysterious door, I’d like some tea and toast if you even still exist.” three times before I heard an excited yelp behind.  
“Merlin’s bloody cunt, you did it”, there the door was, now a smaller one, made of warm cedar with a brass handle. As we jumped through the door, being greeted by the heavenly scent of fresh bread and English breakfast.  
There was the room again, but different now. It was a small kitchenette, with a large old-fashioned toaster next to a heaping basket of every carbohydrate product imaginable. To the left of it was a steaming teapot, with two teabags already stepping in it. And beside it was a great oak table with a couple of twisting stools in front of a window, looking out on the lake.  
I popped a couple of pieces of sourdough into the toaster as Jax popped a blueberry scone into their mouth and leaned onto the table.  
“Soooo, it finally worked, but why this time?” I asked them as they swallowed.  
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it”, they choked out as I found a couple of tea cups in the adjacent cupboard.  
They had an all too annoying grin on their face as I turned towards them, threateningly with my wand out.  
“I swear to Potter, if you go all academic, high-and-mighty on me, I’ll go full Slytherin on you.”  
They put their hands up, “All right, alright. So, as much as I regret it, I don’t need to hide any of my furry porn-”  
“Because all of the Ravenclaws are perverts.”  
“Valid. And I don’t need a swimming pool, or anything else like that either. But you,” they grabbed another pastry, a muffin this time, “Needed, or at least believe you needed, toast. It’s not just your saying it that does it, it’s how you feel about it, your fancy of the whole thing.”  
I passed them the tea as they continued, and I took a pen out in one hand, writing some notes down. About half an hour past, with us trading theories and crunching on breakfast, causing a speckling of crumbs to rain slightly onto the hardwood. We were about to leave for our first class when I suddenly looked out onto the lake in realization.  
“This is the view from the left upper side of the castle.”  
They looked at me strangely, “Yes, good job, Dora the explorer. You want to point it out on your map?”  
“Shut up, raven-head, this part of the castle is square in the center of the castle. It shouldn’t be possible.”  
They beamed, as I pointed it out excitedly. “You know what this means, right? I get to finally use my physics for something useful. It’s not just a constantly changing room, it’s teleporting to differently parts of the castle.”  
“Wow, teleporting. Spock much?”  
“Oh, come off it.”, they stopped, “Hey, how do you know about Spock?”  
They looked at me accusatively. I put my hands up in protest. “Hey, I’ve never touched any of your muggle junk. Now….accios on the other hand”.   
I smiled, dashing out of the room as they followed, yelling some nonsense about witch hangings and scarlet letters. Like witches weren’t all burned in Britiain anyway.

The next test didn’t come until a few days later. We were in Transfiguration, and Jax nudged me as the teacher called out names.   
“Hey, do you want to continue the experiments today?”  
I looked over at them, and checked my planner, “Sure, yeah, after dinner around 8ish?”  
“Works for me, heck, I can move some stuff in.”  
“Honestly, Jax, don’t do that immediately. You don’t know how-“  
“Delphine?” the young, purple-haired wizard asked, like he couldn’t see me right in front of him.  
I grimaced, “Here, sir.”  
I absolutely despised my name. It didn’t sound like anything from the 21st century, but like some rubbish plump duchess who spent all day stitching and pumping out children. Everything about it was just….to bloody feminine. Thank goodness Jax had immediately started calling me Del when we became close, because as they said, “you only have to say three letters when you call me, so it’s only fair for me to do the same. I’m not going to spend a third of my life just yelling your neverending title, it’s exhausting.”  
After calling a few other names he called our attention to the front. “Now, boys and girls. He said, and I twitched slightly. We weren’t first-years, violet. He continued, “Today we have a bit of something different for you. We’ve put off transforming hedgehogs into fedoras for another day”, there was a show of appreciation around the room, “Because due to current events, both I, and the ministry, thought this was more important.”  
“Oh, Merlin, it’s more of this nonsense”, Jax whispered to me as a woman in blue ministry robes came out from the teacher’s office with a wide smile on her face and a tub of pamphlets.  
As she put the bin down, lavender-hair kept talking, “So, as you may be aware, the ministry has recently been having problems with some unregulated transfiguration. Ms. Klieser here is going to shed some light on this whole thing, and I think we can learn some very interesting things about how one deals with these issues.”  
“One”, Jax added to their notebooks, they’d been keeping count of microaggressions lately to, “Makes the idiocy interesting at least”, as they said.  
I sighed inwardly as well, even if on the outside I was a fascinated student, quill at the ready, prepared to learn.  
I guess it is only to be expected that the Wizarding world would be behind on a few things. While most of Britain was dealing with the aftermath of the HIV epidemic and LGBT people were slowly allowed “a little rights, as a treat”, they were dealing with a bloody war, after all. Matters didn’t help much when Skeeter’s expose on Dumbledore got into all those juicy details with Grindlewald. Surprisingly, being told that one of the best wizards of our time was closeted, and had to deny himself the love of his life, along with all other relationships apparently, in order to save the wizarding world wasn’t a great endorsement. But for the most part magical Britain did what they did best when it came to affairs not concerning them, ignored it. That was, until Glinda Lastming.   
It all came down to the Muggle affairs office noticing signs of powerful magic happening all around Brighton. Sure, magical people were constantly going in and out of the Muggle world, but there wasn’t any major Wizarding landmarks here, and all the extremely powerful magic was happening in the same fifteen miles. After they fucked around for a while, they found that a witch called Glinda had been transforming people’s primary and secondary sex characteristics to better fit their identity.  
“So, all of you guys know the nasty business about Gerald Lastming and how he unorthodoxly changed not only his own body, but even mentally unwell Muggle people’s as well. Now, he’s been bouncing from Askaban to house-arrest for a few years now, but he had a new hearing recently, arguing that, like medi-wizards, he had a “duty””, she mocked as Jax scowled at them, “to “treat” his fellow men. So, with all this talk, I’m sure you all are confused, and I’ll be happy to explain some things.”  
“First off, medical wizards have always worked primarily for wizard patients, obviously. But during wide pandemics, some have been sent out to the Muggle world, to serupticiously help create cures and vaccines.”  
“So it wouldn’t spread to your nice, pure-blood families”, Jax muttered under their breath.  
“And sometimes they even will pose as ordinary Muggle doctors, if they are particularly passionate about body transmorphcation, on things like fixing noses and extracting fat. This is a normal part of medi-wizard learning that combines the medical with transfiguration. It’s a very technical science, combining the scientific study of the body with the change in matter. As long as you keep our world out of it, we don’t care much. But, Gerald was different because he was actively harming-“  
At that point things erupted. “Bloody Potter, will you stop saying “he” every other word, lady”, Jax suddenly exploded.  
I looked at them, aghast.   
The witch (more like bitch, Jax smirked later) smiled brightly as the rest of the class turned their heads to stare at us. Periwinkle-dandruff was glaring at them.  
“And……why would that be, dear. Sorry, didn’t catch your name there when you were cursing at me.”  
Susie, a rubbish Slytherin, who nickname both my feminist and alliterative mind kept fighting over, called out, “Her name is Jacqueline.”  
“It’s fucking Jax, and I use they/them pronouns, all of you fucking know this.”  
“That’s enough”, lilac-mullet finally yelled, “Jacqueline, report to your head of house immediately. You’re lucky I’m not suspending you.”  
Their posture was ready to revolt, and I was wondering if I had to drag them out. But then they grabbed their bag and wand, stomping to the door leading out to the corridor, turning to death-stare at the entire room one more time before slamming the door behind them.  
“Oh well, there’s always one in every class”, she shrugged and went on, “As I said, in actively harming the mentally sick Muggles-“  
And I kept smiling, putting quill to page with my right hand, as my left sat on my thigh, creating a dark red droplet of blood from where I was pinching myself.  
I looked for them all day after class, until I realized their was only one place I hadn’t checked yet. Trotting up to the seventh corridor, I stopped by the mural a moment, thinking of what they would ask it.  
I walked the hallway fifteen times till I got the right answer. “I want somewhere that feels fucking safe.” I whispered for the third time as a small closet door with a triangle sticker in the corner formed. Walking through it, I found Jax, crying on the coach while eating popcorn, some kind of Muggle animated show they liked on the television screen. There were old comfy chairs and sofas all around them, a mini-fridge and a microwave, soft blue and green mood lighting, and a wide array of blankets in the corner.  
Stealing a blanket, I sat next to them, curling up.  
“I’m sorry I didn’t follow you.”  
“It’s okay. I know….it’s different for you. You were born here, but it’s not like a non-binary Muggle-born wix was ever going to do well at Hogwarts.”  
I didn’t say anything, there was so much I wanted to say, but couldn’t.  
“But hey, we found out one thing, right”, they chuckled weakly.  
“What’s that?”  
“A person can go into the room when another person’s there, as long as they want the same thing.”  
I smiled at them, “Nerd.”  
“Snake.”  
“Valid.”

**Author's Note:**

> First fanfic and a work in progress; please be gentle.  
> 


End file.
